Posts Tagged ‘Libertarian’

The Libertarian Republic ran a piece about a British-Lithuanian undressing weak Libertarians that seem to be okay with Russian intervention in Ukraine, while simultaneously hating on America for doing the same around the world. Whether one agrees with him or not, it looks like there’s a bunch of butthurt Libertarians in the comment section, and nothing gets his point across more than that. It’s a lovely article. And it reminds me why The Libertarian Republic and Austin Petersen is a breath of insanely fresh air.

There are historical reasons for why Ukraine in general was a domestic political bomb waiting to go off. Crimea sadly shouldn’t have been part of Ukraine to begin with. After all, it was gifted to Ukraine back in the 1950s, when everything was the Soviet Union anyway. Then again, Crimeans have nothing to gain by being part of Russia either. Crimea should always have been its own country. Then they could choose which evil to ally with. Sadly, it seems like they’ll just go from the ashes to the fire this time.

After the Soviet Union exploded, it left many time bombs undetonated in the satellite states. We all know Ukraine has been boiling for the past decade. The Orange Revolution only marked a beginning for what is now unfolding. Putin simply jumped to the occasion and has been making the most of it. Actually, Putin did have some political and military treaties on his side that he’s made use of to get the balls rolling, like the Russian-Ukrainian military agreement in Crimea, in order to let Russia keep its only ice free naval base. This is the “legitimacy” in question. Moral legitimacy? No. Political/legal legitimacy? Sadly, yes. It’s a very complex situation in today’s political environment. A situation the Russian puppet regime in Ukraine left behind for the new quazi-revolutionary government in Ukraine to handle. It might just be much more complex than what the good man being interviewed in the LR article would like to admit to. This is the problem of completely blacklisting Russia as a huge bad guy in this. They have some defense against such allegations, and Putin can use it for his political propaganda at home. They love his giant steel balls back in Russia. It’s the culture there. And we in the West constantly give him excuses to show them off.

Personally I’ve been fascinated by Putin. Not because I like Putin. He’s a maniac. But it’s fascinating to see how he always gets his way. He’s brilliant at the whole international politics thing. I mean, insanely brilliant. He’s incredibly sneaky and have been playing circles around Obama for years now. Like how I noted during the Syria crisis, he was basically able to avoid a possible third world war over Syria by playing the political game like a genius, while America was willing to ally with Al-Qaida against Russia and Syria, in order to punish Assad in what had been nothing but an internal and contained Civil War. Not to mention Putin has continuously been properly critical of US endeavors in the Middle East. He gets how things work. He wasn’t in the KGB for nothing. He knows. He actually knows much better than our fluffy leaders.

So what does all of this do to me as a lover of freedom? It doesn’t make me weak in the knees for Putin. And it surely doesn’t make me an anti-American drone. I love America. I love our Western Civilization. This is where my ideals as a Libertarian and hardcore Capitalist and Individualist were born. Ayn Rand didn’t flee from Soviet to America for nothing. That’s why it makes me furious that Western leaders are nothing but a bunch of incompetent pillocks that play straight into Putin’s political trap. It makes me furious when America sends a young, incompetent hipster intellectual as a UN ambassador, only to get her vegan-environmentalist-Harvard woven sweater laughed at by ballsy Russians that were breast fed with vodka from infancy. We hold no respect. We talk about principles, but we look like a bunch of hypocrites that show no thought to uphold those principles at home, while John Kerry opens his gigantic jaw just to make some empty and thoughtless threats and spouting deeply hypocritical slurs. Our political class is in shambles; a bunch of pretty boys and bimbo girls that think sweet thoughts and puppies will save the world, and that if we only talk stern enough, all the rowdy kids will eventually listen.

Putin knows very well he can do what he does without the West daring to do anything about it. He knows he can be a bully and a brat. Why? Because Americans have become fed up and tired with continuous wars (not to mention bankrupt), just like Ron Paul said 6 years ago, the EU are a bunch of social democrat pansies and Putin and China can completely silence the UN. There is nothing left. I guess the only ones left that knows how to play hardball are Israel. But how would they be able to stand up against a Russian threat when they can’t even handle Hamas?

So if the goal of the West (and us freedom lovers alike, for that matter) is to lead by example and make Russians rebel against Putin and move towards freedom, we’re doing a terrible job at it. We’re just feeding his “whataboutism“, we set up these silly situations where we make it legitimate for him to annex land masses by sneaky tactics, and we’re incapable of doing anything about it when he starts to line up his military along our borders. That’s sad.

But indeed, there is potential for Ukraine to get something good out of this too. Hopefully, Ukraine can finally break free from the puppeteers in Russia. Ideally, they should just have forcibly excluded the areas of anti-Ukrainian sentiments, like Crimea, and offered complete assimilation to anyone in Ukraine who wish to live in a pro-Western, independent Ukrainian republic. Yes, they should have played ball before Putin did. Kick out all the pro-Russian puppets and oligarch jerks, get on the freedom train and ally with the US and EU if they so wish. That would have been brilliant for the people of Ukraine. The excluded areas would be turned into independent states that could choose which side they wanna be on: Become Russian satellites or friends and trading partners with the West. Then if Putin would get trigger happy, we could rightfully bomb his ass into oblivion – no ifs or buts.

That is actually a very Libertarian response. Give me Liberty or give me death! Don’t tread on me! Live free or die! Americans, do you remember these words from your proud past? We certainly wish the rest of the world to uphold those same ideals, don’t we?

What do these words mean? To be moral and peaceful as far as it goes, let people decide over their own land and their own destiny, and always seek the most freedom for individuals, always… but as soon as someone wishes to trample on the individual moral rights of someone, make the greatest use of your right to self defense and fight tyranny by shooting them up, blowing up bombs and kicking in their faces until they can’t trample on your rights any longer. Yes, it’s tough to say that, but it’s true: Always be loving and kind to the loving and kind, but show no mercy to evil.

I know this political situation is not the fault of Libertarians. On the contrary, I believe a Libertarian world would never have produced a mess like this. But when push comes to shove in this mess of a world, please fess up, Libertarians. There are both rights and wrongs in the situation, yes, but there’s never any reason to take it up our asses. Don’t become Pro-Putin Libertarians. You may think that America doesn’t have a say in this situation as of now, and yes, that is completely true. This is a stupid situation that Ukraine should settle on its own. But if Russia starts acting like a bully and comes knocking on our collective doors, like Hitler in the late 30s, we should all dare to take up arms against evil yet again. Not for Obama the socialist, not for the socialist EU, but for our liberty to live without fear of a tyrannical state. We should dare to say and think that. We’re not the same pansies like the hippie-socialist-environmentalist crazies that run our nations and wants to take our guns from us (or as in my country, not really allow me to have a gun for self defense to begin with). At least we should strive to not be like them, even if they make it hard for us. We should dare speak up for the rights of our brethren. That is what the heroes of the Age of Enlightenment would have done.

On July 22nd, 2011, Norway was struck by an act of terrorism and witnessed an unfathomable slaughter of innocent children and young adults on an island in East Norway. We have all read the news and we have all heard the tales of the evil that was brought upon innocent people that day.

Most people in Norway are still mourning the loss of their dear ones, and the wounded are still fighting to make it through. All our thoughts are with them in these tough times, and the sorrow they endure is something we hope no one will have to endure ever again. That is why we need to learn from what has happened and become stronger because of it. We need to fathom the unfathomable. As we are able to get some sort of distance to it all, and been able to reflect over the tragedy, we do see a glimpse of what the truth is in all of this. A manifesto (basically a cut-and-paste collection of many intellectual and meaningful works and pieces of literature – some of them even very good, others very bad) has been released. The manifesto is a collection of many incoherent ideas and opposing schools of thought, put together in a collectivist and conspiratorial way by one man and his world view.

In this scrap book of thoughts and influences, among the many over-lining topics that he focuses on, there are some parts that show the biggest inconsistencies, and that I feel needs to be brought up. He sees himself as an anti-collectivist, and he also do make some references to very good libertarian, classical liberal and objectivist literature (although it should be noted that he also references a lot of neo-conservative and even some communist and socialist literature, but that’s not the topic now). Does this mean he was a terrorist actually working in the name of individualism, or is he mixing up his terminology, just as he’s mixing up his influences in his creation of his own world view?

I think it’s a distinct quality of collectivism and a collectivist world view that enables a man to fully identify himself with some greater force, and to then feel justified to wage a war between the one force and another. In Anders Behring Breivik’s case, he thinks of himself as part of a pan-European mono-ethnic force that is under attack by Islamic colonists and their Marxist collaborators. He theorizes about a possible civil war between these two forces, and he thinks of himself as a pioneer in this war, and is certain he will be remembered as a hero in the future. Knowing this, you’d have a hard time arguing for him being a true individualist. He is 100% a collectivist by any measure of the word. It makes a lot more sense to me that when he speaks of anti-collectivism, he puts that in context of anti-globalism and anti-multiculturalism – he does not want his own collective sharing anything with other “enemy” collectives under a broader regulatory welfare collective. As such, he does not seem to understand the true meaning of the word, and he most certainly is not an individualist.

An individualist could turn to self-defense and could in such a situation take the life of someone, sure, but an individualist would be completely unable to launch an attack against an imagined class or group of people, in the name of his own imagined class or group of people, because that’s not the way individualists see the world. You can probably find killers in any society (and some more so than in others), and I’m certain there can still be deadly crime in an individualist world. We’re all still human. But only collectivists can be mass-murderers and terrorists, because a collectivist world view is a very distinct quality of a mass-murderer and a terrorist.

Now we can make an attempt on a remedy (which I wasn’t able to see in the middle of this tragedy, but after reading an article by Norwegian blogger Onar “Onarki” Åm it all became very clear and obvious to me, and I was able to structure my own thoughts in this article because of it): Having an open society that is able to include all sorts of opposing, alternative and even extreme opinions. That does NOT mean agreeing with them all, but simply to let them be heard in the public sphere, bring them into the conversation and always meet them with rational and logical arguments. I know us libertarians and classical liberals have a really hard time being heard in the modern socialist power house that is the world today, and some of us have felt how it is to be squeezed out, vilified and stigmatized. This was the content for my Bachelor Thesis in Sociology, Spring 2011 (I focused on people identifying themselves as classical liberals and objectivists), and stigmatization of political minorities is very much a reality, especially in Social Democratic Norway. People who are not among the general majority of political opinions will always experience a stigma that is to some unbearable. If you push them far enough and hate them enough, there will come a time where they will “snap”. This have happened with Islamist terrorists, and this have now happened with a guy in Norway, who have long tried to speak about his distaste for Muslim immigration to Norway and Europe, but has never been heard – not even been talked to. A crusader-fixation was his desperate and twisted way of being heard. It’s like a stigmatized nation getting hold of Nuclear Weapons in order to be taken seriously.

Now, as I mentioned, there is a very good reason why true individualists (like libertarians, classical liberals and objectivists) cannot become terrorists in such a situation of stigmatization that we find ourselves in. Our own opinions and world view inhibit us from thinking in such directions. Individualism makes us morally unable to, and it’s also completely against our own self-interests. We will always continue the long and hard road ahead of us by trying to spread the word of liberty and freedom in peaceful terms, and hope to turn a few over to our side as we go along. We are wired that way, and we would not be individualists if we weren’t wired that way. A collectivist, however (and perhaps also altruistic as such), can see it as both justified and in his own self-interests to take a bunch of lives (and maybe also his own) for his own warped imagery of the greater good. To him, one life does not matter. To him, the unalienable rights of fellow men and women does not exist. All he see is the greater good and people as pawns in a game much greater than themselves. All individualists must reject any such notion, and as such becomes the greatest opposite to acts of terrorism.

It’s certainly a pity that Breivik brings a bad name to good literature on his way into the history books, and it’s just another way for the majority to put a stigma on more minorities through guilt by association, and let me just make it clear that it’s a completely natural answer to such atrocities, but it’s also the wrong answer. More openness, inclusion and debate is the real answer! If we were to believe our Prime Minister here in Norway, this is actually what we’re gonna work for, but if we were to believe all newspapers and many individuals in Norway, we will see a stigma put on the backs of many innocent people in the years to come. I can see that the work for libertarians and classical liberals in Norway will become much harder, as we’re far outside the political majority, but hopefully we will be able to show that we are right in the end. I know I will fight even harder for individualism, liberty and freedom, because I know it’s the real remedy against such atrocities that we have endured, and I do not ever want to see them happen again to anyone.